


Once Upon a Time...

by tatarrific



Category: South of Nowhere
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 08:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2500871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatarrific/pseuds/tatarrific
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If her life were a story she could tell, Ashley thinks, Spencer would be her happy ending."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once Upon a Time...

**Author's Note:**

> Two things to note - **ONE** \- this story was inspired by the wonderful folks over at TWOP - and especially by a comment made by Wordsmyth, about Ashley and abundance of space around her. It got into my head, and wouldn't leave till this came out.

~~~~

She loves the beach at night. At night, even in LA, there is enough darkness to enshroud, to hide. Enough darkness to liberate – sounds from the source, shapes from the colors, salt scent from the breeze. The ocean, if possible, seems bigger, louder – the sound of the rapacious waves against the sodden sand, the sucking sound of them retreating into that twirling, glittering mass of water and foam, and above it all, a full moon in her glittering dress. She has looked at the moon, at all of her faces, so many times she feels she can recall each one of them. She never saw the man in the moon. No, her moon wore a tiara, silver shoes, a see-through dress. Her moon would kick off her shoes and dance over the waves at night.

Ashley loves the beach at night. The night tells a different kind of story then, the familiar dimmed, shadows forming a new, different reality. Voices are different at night, coming across clearer even when muted, words thinner, leaner, meaning distilled. Ashley knows how to read the language of the night. Ever since she was a little girl, little enough that her dad was still there to read her stories at night, she would listen to the tales of heroes and heroines, but she would hear the stories behind the words. There were stories of great heroes, magnificent deeds; a monster slain, a maiden freed, a kingdom restored. She would listen, but instead she would hear tales of sad, misunderstood monsters living in deep caves under lakes, stories of snake-haired women, hated because they were different, tales of bull-men lost in labyrinths made by others. Ashley wondered what was wrong with sleeping on in peace, sleeping for an eternity. Some dreams were not meant to be interrupted, not even with a kiss.

Ashley loves the beach at night. There are times when, if she stays there long enough, stays there quiet and patient enough, LA leaves, packs up and takes its din and its people and the cars and the noise with it, leaves her alone with the night for a while, just she and the ocean and the moon. She closes her eyes then, imagines her blanket a raft, imagines her raft out in the ocean, imagines it bobbing away under the moonlight. Imagines the stories she would tell.

_“Once upon a time, there lived a girl in the land of angels. She lived in a big room in a big castle in a vast city surrounded by water. The Queen was gone, the King far away. The girl was used to being alone. Once upon a time, that was enough._

Ashley doesn't like to tell stories. She comes to the beach instead, and listens to the night.

 

~~~~

 

It is early, too early for anyone to be awake on a Saturday morning, but when she drives by Spencer's house, she hears the thump-thump of a basketball hitting the pavement. She parks on an impulse. Glen looks at her oddly when she walks up, but then points her to the open back door with a wicked smile. Concept of sibling humor is not lost on Ashley; she already knows that Spencer hates early mornings. She has only been to the Carlin residence once before, but the house is small, uncomplicated, and she finds her way to Spencer's bedroom easily. The parents' room is on one end of the hallway, Clay's on the other. That knowledge gives this house a different kind of silence, the kind Ashley doesn't want to disturb. A soft tap, a moment, and she palms the cool metal of the doorknob, turns it.

It amazes her again, how small the room is, how neat. One window is enough to bathe the entire room in first, gentle rays of early morning sunlight. The door clicks shut behind her and she leans on it, looks at Spencer. The girl is a mess of blond hair, a curve under the sheets from this angle. Spencer is lying on her stomach, face turned away from Ashley, one arm curled tightly against a pillow pressed against her side. Ashley smiles, takes it in. She would have expected a daintier pose, something more picturesque, a stuffed animal of some kind. That is then when she wonders what she is doing there. She barely knows the girl. Would she want someone she just met, Spencer, showing up at her bedside in the morning, uninvited, just to say hi?

The answer makes her pause. Makes her step forward, walk over. She perches on the edge of the bed, hand hovering, then lays her palm on the sleep-warmed cotton over the girl's shoulder. Spencer moves under her touch, mumbles. Her arm tightens around the pillow. Ashley presses down a smile, moves her hand in small, slow circles.

“Hey... Wake up, sleepy-head.”

Spencer moves her head, tries to look up from under the sheath of blond hair covering her face, slowly rolls over on her back. Blinks up at her owlishly, confused, brows furrowed.

“Ash?”

Ashley folds her hands primly in her lap, smiles at the girl.

“Good morning!” It comes out too bright, too chipper and she sees Spencer wince at the sound of it, winces along with her.

“What-...,” Spencer shakes her head, befuddled, “What are you doing here? What time is it?”

Ashley rubs her nose, suddenly fascinated by the scuff on her boots. “I was, um, just driving by on my way back, and I...,” she chances a glance; Spencer looks at her squinty-eyed, amused, and Ashley loses her train of thought. “I stopped by?”

Spencer is smiling now, rubbing her eyes. “You're weird.” She looks at Ashley again, cocks her head. “You have sand in your hair.”

Ashley smiles back, touches her hair, feels the sand under her fingertips. Sees it sprinkle the heavy sweatshirt she is wearing, the bed covers she is sitting on. She stands up. “I'm a mess.”

Spencer's head is still cocked to the side, and she props herself up on her elbows as she watches Ashley try to smooth her clothes down, comb back her hair with her fingers, give up, tie it in a lose ponytail. Ashley looks back at her, sees Spencer shake her head, smile. Hears her say “I don't mind.”

They stay like that for a moment, two, smiling, and then Ashley yawns, feels her jaw crack with it, her eyes water. When it stops, she sees Spencer smother her own under a palm of an upturned hand. She smiles at the blond girl. “Sorry.”

“No worries.”

Ashley feels another yawn coming on, bites it off, moves to the door. “I should go get some sleep. And you should get back to bed, too.”

Spencer looks at her oddly, but just nods, stifles another yawn of her own. She plops back on her stomach, adjusts her pillow, arm around it, and Ashley again notices the strong grip, the possessive curve of the girl's arm.

“Ash?”

“Hm?”

“Wanna hang out later on?”

Ashley smiles, a gamble paid off. “Yeah. I'll call you later.”

“At a reasonable time!” It is said in a low voice, in warning, yet on the edge of laughter, teasingly; a bouquet of diverging emotions only friends communicate in.

Ashley salutes smartly, opens the door. “G'night, Spencer.”

Spencer looks at her in amusement, in wonderment and then, with a shake of her head, with acceptance. “Good night, Ashley.”

Ashley takes a moment, leaning on the other side of the closed door, feels a giddy smile stretch her face. She then gallops down the stairs, this time not caring that her boots are making hollow thump-thump sounds with every step, runs to her car.

 

~~~~

 

Ashley sleeps like a starfish. Limbs spread out, afloat in her dreams, she makes an ocean out of her bed. She makes up simple stories in her dreams, sings whale songs – her message in a bottle, carried away by the waves. Sometimes, when she wakes up, her life feels like a dream. A long, sheets twisted with scared sweat kind of dream. In her real dreams, at night, she is never alone. Echoes of an empty house don't follow her there. Only when she is awake, a big house, a big city all to herself, she feels that she is young, a little girl all on her own. When she wakes, Ashley dresses for the days filled with echoes. Ashley dresses up. Into someone large, someone who can fill up the space, fill up the lavishly-appointed rooms, fill up the silence.

Ashley climbs into her big car, drives to the big school. The school is never empty, there are bodies everywhere, voices, faces and yet... The emptiness echoes.

Ashley drives through the big city, all lights and noise. The stereo is turned up loud, and sometimes music is enough to fill her up. Then she stops at a red light and the stillness settles around her again. Big girls don't feel lost. Big girls find their way.

Ashley learned how to swim when she was three years old. It is all smells and sounds, that memory, afloat in the chlorinated water, her father's hand below her belly, holding her up, the first clumsy strokes. Her dad's face, hair slicked back, a big smile, and she – swimming towards it. Getting nearer. Arms around his neck, a whoop of approval, of pride. When she told her dad about that recently, sitting by the pool of his new house, someone not much older than she splashing in the pool, making pouty, demanding faces at him, he didn't remember it. “Three?,” he said. “Impossible.” Ashley watched him jump in the pool then, swim towards his girl du jour, watched his clumsy strokes, the childish splashing around.

His father taught her how to swim. Her mother gave her space. Sometimes she feels defined by the gifts her parents gave her. Sometimes she is awfully, overwhelmingly tired of having to swim through the emptiness, swim towards another unreliable memory.

Ashley finds respite where she can, every bobbing buoy, every bare, deserted island in the heaving ocean. Sometimes it's a song, sometimes a cool, dry day with the sun in her hair. Often it is a face, a body that makes the edges of her bed seem closer for a while, even if for a night. A space defined by sighs, by fleeting pleasure. A reprieve. All too often she is cast out again, out into the ocean, waves echoing about her with emptiness, with space.

Ashley sleeps like a starfish. In her dreams she sinks, tranquil, to the bottom of the sea, rests on the sandy ground. At peace.

 

~~~~

 

When they walk together, to class, from class, through the mall, into the house – next to each other, close enough that Ashley can smell Spencer's shampoo when the wind gifts her with a cross-current breeze, close enough but not touching – she can feel the space around her closely, like a glove. When they walk together, gone is the vastness, gone the emptiness. There is she, and there Spencer, and between them – possibilities. Opportunities.

When she unlocks the doors to her house and throws them open, lets Spencer walk in before her, it is not emptiness that greets her, not the hollow echoes of her footsteps across the marble, no. The loneliness recedes before Spencer, a dusty cover lifted off unused rooms, and underneath it riches, spoils: light laughter, friendly teasing, a lingering touch, an unabashed smile.

When their laughter echoes against the walls of her bedroom, Ashley welcomes it, wants to trap it, turn it into a lullaby to set her raft adrift to every night, find her way back to in the morning. She knows it is too much to want of this new friendship, too much to want for herself, but they float towards each other with ease, helped by the undercurrents. She has been adrift, a small bit of flotsam among the waves, for long, so long she doesn't remember what firm ground feels like.

She is sure, when she lets herself think about it, think about the 'what ifs', she is certain it has something to do with the fact that she can't remember the last time her mother touched her. She receives air kisses, money, she receives stern admonitions from across the room or over the telephone, she receives gifts, clothing advice, but she cannot recall the last time her mother laid a hand on her. A touch, a caress, a slap – there were times when she tried to provoke either from her mother. She doesn't know what hurts her more, that the most she could elicit out of her mother is an annoyed look, a barbed directive, or that even now, even after all this time she still feels that eagerness, that desire to please each time she sees her mother walk towards her. Walk past her.

Ashley learned to settle for the next best option. She has learned how to trade for physical attention with others; if I do this, touch me there. Hold me. Ashley knows the give and take of physical pleasure well, the measured exchange. A caress is a seduction, a touch an invitation. You pay in kind. Sometimes when she wakes, the pull of dreams abandoning her to another day, her arms are wound tightly around herself, a good-bye embrace. Sometimes it feels as though it's the only kind she knows.

And then there is Spencer, innocent brushes of arm against arm, a hand offered in support, a palm laid on her forearm to draw her attention, or to comfort. Ashley learns how to accept that empathy, the uncomplicated support, one touch at a time. Learns how to accept it as it is, a hand extended in friendship, unselfishly, understand that she is not automatically required to offer something of herself in return, accept that she can't expect more than what is being given. Ashley learns what it is to be a friend. What it is to have one.

 

~~~~

 

Ashley can feel it developing between them, growing into something bigger, a thing different from what it was meant to be, something beautiful. Something fragile. She knows how she feels about Spencer. Most of the time she is certain. Sometimes she is just scared. Always, always though – through every encounter, every conversation they have with their eyes, each subtle shift of lips from a smirk into a smile, she is excited. There it is, right before them, out of the tight cocoon of their friendship, something bigger. Something different from what it was meant to be, something beautiful.

Sometimes she is scared. She can feel this new friendship like a blanket over her, warm and protective. Ashley yearns to draw it around her even closer, wrap herself in it, let it keep her warm and safe, cared for. She hasn't had that before, seen genuine care reflected at her from someone's eyes, hasn't gotten used to the notion that someone would be there for her. She doesn't want it to change, doesn't want to risk losing it.

And yet. Ashely can recognize the strength of this new emotion, feel the swell of it, a tide rushing in. She has seen it, she has heard the hungry, gurgling sound of dry rock crevices filled with the onslaught of the sea, a sound of willing surrender. She has seen it so many times, felt the ocean draw back, grow, unleash itself onto the shore, flood it, slap the wood of the piers with its waves, fill in dried out crab shells, take over. She is no more equipped to defend herself from these feelings than she would be to turn the tide with her bare hands. She welcomes it. She wants to hear the ocean sing in the seashell of her heart.

And yet. The tide pulls back, the ocean retracts, empties out the brittle crab husks, leaves new wreckage on the shore. Their new friendship is a cocoon, a tight shell against the outside world, a warm blanket. She has just learned the dimensions of it, felt it fill in the space, quiet down the echoes. She is not ready for the tide to rush in, sweep her away. She doesn't want to let it go, let it change, even as she feels the cocoon expanding, cracking under the pressure, even as she knows something beautiful will emerge, something different.

Ashley is afraid of anything with wings, such tender creatures, and the winds too fickle, cross-currents strong. She doesn't want to see their friendship turned into yet another dried husk strewn across the shore, a broken thing for the wind to blow through.

And, yet... She feels it developing between them, straining against the walls of the cocoon they created for themselves, something bigger, something beautiful. She watches Spencer cross the schoolyard, walk towards her, she sees the girl smile. She feels herself smile in response. Feels the fragile stirrings of their new creation, its shape more distinct with every smile they share, feels it yearning for the sky. She will give it wings. She will let it fly. It will be beautiful.

 

~~~~

 

Ashley loves the beach at night. She picks up a pebble, flings it into the ocean. It disappears with a quiet 'plunk', barely audible above the hum of the waves. It seems hungry, the ocean, a beast with a thousand mouths, each giving you wet, needy kisses, drawing you in. Each telling you tales, stories of kingdoms lost, loves betrayed. Ashley lays back down, looks at the moon, round again, a full cycle gone, lets the ocean serenade her. If her life were a story she could tell, Ashley thinks, Spencer would be her happy ending.

Ashley loves the beach at night. One of these nights, soon, she will take Spencer here, lay out the blanket, sit her before the ocean. Ashley closes her eyes, feels the moonlight on her eyelids, smiles. One of these nights, soon, she will bring Spencer here, lie in the circle of her arms and they, together, will – touch by touch, sigh by sigh – refute every tale the ocean ever told her, every whispered lie. They will hold back the tide.

One of these nights, soon. Under the moon. She will tell her own fairytale. _Soon._


End file.
